This invention relates to a method and apparatus for supplying bar-like members and, in particular, bar-like members such as cigarettes and filter plugs.
In conventional supplying methods, as disclosed in Japanese Examined Pat. Publication No. 48-34919, and Japanese Examiner Utility Model Publication Nos. 56-52880 and 57-28640, a bar-like member containing box is placed in an inverted condition above a hopper disposed on a horizontally extending belt conveyor, and bar-like members are naturally dropped from an opening in the bottom of the box into a hopper, so that they may be supplied from the hopper onto a belt conveyor.
With such conventional methods, however, since the supplying action is attained by the natural dropping of the bar-like members from the containing box, it is difficult to speed-up the supplying operation, whereby greatly increasing the quantity of supplied bar-like members is not expected.
Further, the bar-like members are supplied from an opening in the bottom of a containing box to an accumulating surface of bar-like members already stored in the hopper. Since such an accumulating surface presents an unevenness, some of the bar-like members dropping from the containing box may be caught by the convex portions of the surface, or may be rolled obliquely into concave portions of the stack in the hopper resulting in disordered orientation of bar-like members, that is, inclined with respect to the vertical direction. Accordingly, conventional methods are defective in that they cannot assure a smooth supplying operation.